


Give

by deedeeinfj



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-11
Updated: 2013-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-28 23:59:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/680351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deedeeinfj/pseuds/deedeeinfj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarissa wants something she has never experienced.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on Livejournal, 2004.

_Where am I to sleep?_  he had asked, and Clarissa still heard the question repeated in her mind. As she walked beside him in the dark, quiet hall, she glanced at him briefly: a small man, pale and sometimes cross-looking - but not tonight. Tonight his face was grave and unhappy. In her experience, she had known only one way to help and to comfort; but Stephen knew her history, and she knew that he would not accept what she might offer in that line. He would know it meant nothing to her, and he would despise himself as an object of pity moved grossly by lust. But what if it weren't an offer? What if it were a request - something he could do for her? Yes, Diana might be called her friend, but she loved Stephen infinitely more.   
  
When they stopped at her bedroom door, she reached one hand behind her and rested it on the knob. “Stephen,” she said quietly, “will you do something for me?”  
  
“Anything, my dear,” he replied. “I owe you so much gratitude already, sure, that I should not begrudge you a kingdom.”  
  
She swallowed and met his eyes directly. “I have never known the heights of human pleasure, which others have enjoyed in my company. I thought tonight... I realize that I am too forward in asking, but you know that I have kept no secret from you. Surely you know that I love you, Stephen?”  
  
“Do not be moved by pity and offer yourself to me as--”  
  
“I am not offering myself to you,” she replied, her face flushed. “I... I am asking you to give yourself to me. Only tonight. I know that you can never be fully mine, for you are Diana's. But just once, I would like to know what pleasure a man can give, instead of endless lessons in what a man can take.” He was silent, lost in thought. She knew that he wanted her; he always had. And yet he was the only one who didn't try to take her. “Please, Stephen.”   
  
Breathing in deeply, she reached up and loosened her hair, watching the flash of desire in his eyes as it fell around her shoulders. He said nothing as his hand joined hers on the knob and turned it, opening the door. She stepped backwards into the dark chill of her room, never removing her eyes from his as he followed and closed the door behind him. She approached him and pressed her body against his, her blood pounding at his sharp breath when she kissed him. He stood still and watched as she untied his cravat and pushed his coat from his shoulders. One candle flickered on her bedside table, and she followed its light, leading Stephen by the hand.  
  
He wrapped his arms around her waist and brought her close again, smiling with the gentle kindness he hid too often. In his eyes she saw the kind of curious excitement he reserved for his first sighting of a new or rare species. He kissed her patiently, threading his fingers into her hair, tracing her lips with his tongue. In that moment, she realized with an aching heart that no man had ever kissed her. They had pressed their lips to hers and thrust their tongues greedily into her mouth, but no man had tasted her, caressed her, teased her this way.  
  
How would she find the strength to give him up again after this night? She sighed against him and leaned closer, unfastening his buttons with shaky fingers. His skin was pale and surprisingly soft for someone who lived so much at sea. She trailed her hands over his chest, raising her eyes to watch his face as she slid her fingers just under the waist of his breeches.   
  
“You are an uncharted land to me,” she murmured, “and yet you know every surface of my body.”  
  
He brushed her jaw and throat with his fingers. “I know your body as a surgeon knows a patient. That is vastly different from how I shall learn it as a lover.”  
  
“I have never had a lover,” she replied - and Stephen was the one person on earth who could understand and appreciate what she meant.  
  
He undressed her with a gentleness and care she had never known, and her skin rose into tiny bumps under his fingers as she shivered with sensation and the cold of the room. Remarkable that she should blush under his gaze after so many personal examinations at sea. Together they divested Stephen of his trousers, and Clarissa kissed him again, twining her fingers into his. Many a man more handsome and charming had taken her to warm his bed, but none had stirred her blood, moved her more, than Stephen did now.   
  
He lowered her to the bed and hovered over her, feathering kisses down her throat and across her slender collarbone as his trained surgeon's hands slid down her sides. When his lips and tongue found her breasts, she moaned his name and buried her hands in his hair. Her hips seemed to arch towards his of their own accord. Even now, Stephen did not hurry. Shoulders, belly, ears, forehead, legs – even the soft, tender skin inside her elbow – no surface of her skin was beneath his notice.  
  
Clarissa felt protected and adored beneath him, and she wanted to hold him there, above her, always. She wished that she were the mother of his beautiful daughter, and that he had returned home to find them there, mother and daughter, overjoyed to see him again at last. He had deserved that, and she had wanted more than anything to provide it.  
  
“I love you, Stephen,” she said again, guiding his mouth back to hers and kissing him softly.  
  
He did not reply in kind, nor did she expect him to do so, but the hand resting on her belly slid lower. She drew in a shaky breath and stared up at him. Her labored breaths turned into moans as he touched her, the familiar, clinical touch of the sickberth suddenly passionate, drawing pleasure from her as relentlessly as one of his friend’s broadsides.   
  
“Stephen,” she gasped, “If you want to… you should… I’m going to…” She had never discovered what followed this intense building of sensation, as no man had taken the care to show her. With some, she had felt no pleasure of any kind. But she knew – she felt that her body was about to reach that point at last, and she didn’t know if she could wait for Stephen to join her.  
  
He brushed his lips over her throat. “Only you, joy.”  
  
The sweet pleasure swept over her in a burst of understanding every sonnet – until now, all meaningless – and the bittersweet knowledge that having found a man to whom she wanted to give everything, she had chosen a man who would take nothing.


End file.
